


Well He Said "Slow Down, Slow Down"

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Feels, M/M, Tender - Freeform, angstish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is going away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Well He Said "Slow Down, Slow Down"

**Author's Note:**

> [Going Away -- Meg & Dia](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7oWMtwK9tI)

Stiles has a plan.

Or, well, he has an outline of a plan.

The sketches of an outline of a plan.

He's been holding pen to paper for the past three hours, so it's a start. Kind of.

He glowers down at the paper as though it wronged him, as though it's the paper's fault that he can't figure out how to explain to his friends—his _pack_ , his mind tells him traitorously—that there's no way he's staying in Beacon Hills for the rest of his life. He loves them, even Jackson who like fifty percent hates him—even then, there's just this overwhelming fondness for his dickbag attitude. He loves Scott, and Isaac, and Erica and Boyd and Lydia and even Alison when she cares enough to hang around them still.

And, fuck fuck  _fuck_ he really loves Derek.

And, if he lets himself think about it, Derek is a big reason he's leaving. Stiles never had the fear of staying in a small town, he wasn't sick of his home or of his friends—but he was sick of pining. Pining is for the movies, for those trashy novels Lydia keeps slipping in his locker, pining is for all those live-sick band boys and their deviously catchy albums.

Pining isn't for Stiles.

Except it has been for almost three years now.

And now that he's freshly eighteen, working his way off the high school conveyor belt, Stiles has to put his foot down.

He starts scribbling on the page, and actually throws his pen against the wall when he realized he's doodle his and Derek's name and a bunch of little fluffy blue-ink  _pups_ .

He growls and lets his forehead thunk onto his desk. This got out of hand a year and a half ago—when everyone finally told Stiles that he was so obviously in love with Derek—and at this point it was just pathetic.

Stiles looks up slowly and rubs his eyes. He's got four bags packed full and another three torn between being packed and being dumped on the floor of his closet again. His dad has already said he'll support whatever Stiles chooses, and somehow that just makes it worse. Everyone, it seems, has already resigned themselves to living life without Stiles. And it hurts, because they adjusted so fast, they've been letting him slip from more and more pack meetings.

He sighs and buries his face in his hands. He feels like crying, but tells himself he's done enough of that already. Stiles looks through the gaps in his fingers at the page, staring back and mocking him. He sighs heavier. He wishes that this wasn't his decision, for someone to take it out of his hands.

For Derek to take it out of his hands. For Derek to climb through the window and pull Stiles close and tell him,  _command_ him like he does with the rest of the pack—that Stiles will stay here and he will be  _Derek's_ .

Stiles laughs bitterly to himself. Just when he thought he couldn't get more piteous. Stiles shakes his head, sitting up a little straighter. He stares at the paper, and wonders, idly, if when he gets an apartment somewhere else if he should get a cat or not.

“Regardless of where you're living, you are never getting a cat.”

Stiles, by now, isn't ashamed to admit that he flat out screams and topples out of the desk chair, falling ass first into an open suitcase. He looks wildly at Derek, at the open window. “Derraahhah?” Comes spilling out of his mouth and he snaps his lips shut because wow  _really_ .

Derek grins, small and just twitching at his lips. Stiles relishes the expression. It's not uncommon, not these days, for Derek to smile—he just seems to smile less at Stiles. “Stiles,” Derek's gaze shifts from Stiles to the suitcases, and shifts from happy to confused irritation. “What are you doing?”

“Packing.” Stiles replies easily and motions to the four suitcases zipped shut.

“Why are you not going to meetings?”

Stiles struggles to stand (either he fell in the smallest suitcase he owns or all those curly fries are going straight to his hips because his  _ass_ gets  _stuck_ ) and says indignantly “hey! I go to most of them!”

“You haven't been in almost two weeks.”

So, maybe his efforts to sever all ties were a little premature. “So? Why do you care?”

Derek bristles, and Stiles thinks about how he thought only dogs did that. “You are pack Stiles, we've had this conversation before.” And they did, when Stiles first had his three month long freak out about being in love with Derek.

“Yeah, but, you know.” Stiles says, cryptic and stupid.

Derek's eyes narrow. “No, I  _don't_ know. That's why I'm here.”

Stiles can't hold his gaze, so it drops to the carpet. He shoves his hands in his pockets and scuffs his feet along the floor. “I need to get out of here.” He says quietly.

Derek raises an eyebrow, and that's something Stiles has always been jealous off, Derek's control over his eyebrows. Not everyone can do that you know.

Stiles blinks and says “what” because it's pretty obvious that Derek said something.

Derek doesn't even sigh, or groan, or growl—he almost looks fond, and it makes Stiles' heart ache. “Get out of  _where_ ?”

“Here.” Stiles casts his arms out in a grand gesture.

“Your dad's house?”

Stiles knows Derek isn't that stupid, he knows that Derek wants him to say it.

“Beacon Hills.” Stiles grits out.

Derek doesn't nod. He does that thing where his lips looks especially thin and unhappy, where his cheekbones seem especially intimidating, where his eyes are an icy blue verging on red. “Why?”

Stiles shrugs slowly. “Because I'm eighteen, I'm almost done with high school. I want to go see the world, and, and shit.” He falters because it isn't what he wants. Not in the slightest, not in anyway. He looks at Derek briefly, unsurprised to meet an unwavering glare back.

“You've never said this before.” Derek says because he knows, he's so perceptive, just like Stiles. Derek is just less obnoxious about it. “You've never once said that you wanted to get out of this town.” Derek takes a step closer, and Stiles wants to point out that Derek is tracking more mud into his room, but he doesn't. Derek steps closer and closer, each footstep less muddy than the last, until they're almost touching—nose to nose, chest to chest, knees knocking as Stiles buckles.

“Derek—?”

“Shut up Stiles.” And even though it lacks the usual heat, the usual bite, Stiles obeys anyways. “I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen, okay?” Derek tells him, and some of Stiles' nerves ebb away because it's being taken out of his hands. Just like he wanted. “I was waiting.” Derek says carefully, three years of pent up patience coming through like a smack to the face. “You were _barely sixteen_ when I met you—not only would your dad have killed me, but I could've been arrested, I could've been targeted.” Derek shifts, and Stiles relishes the vulnerability. “You could've been targeted, easily.”

Stiles vaguely considers that this, this confession of _something_ , is also what happens in those books and those movies and those albums. It's never supposed to happen to Stiles.

“Seventeen was better—you _realized_ , you were told and it was true.”

Stiles goes over the words in his head,  _'I love you, I love you, I loooove you, I love youuuu'_ until Derek snaps his fingers in front of Stiles' face.

“I was waiting because I needed to be sure. I needed to know that—?” Derek makes a distressed noise, like a dog in pain, “I needed to know that this was as real for you as it was for me.” His hands shake as he places them on Stiles' shoulders, fingertips pressing into the skin through the shirt. Stiles shivers as warm spreads along his neck and shoulders, blanketing down his back. “I was going to talk to you, soon. After high school, after you graduating but—!” Another choked up noise that's so very unlike anything Stiles has ever seen of Derek. He's seen Derek vulnerable, tender, amused, angry, furious, hurt, happy—but he's never seen Derek like _this_.

It gives Stiles hope, gives him confidence. It makes it easier for Stiles to raise his own quivering arms and loop them around Derek's neck, and pull him close. He presses his forehead against Derek's jaw, breathing softly until Derek's arms drop and wrap around him too. “I know it's near impossible for you to say more than five words at any given time, so I'll relieve you of any further torment.” Stiles says against Derek's exposed collarbone. He closes his eyes against the soft reverberation of laughter in Derek's chest, rising in his throat. “And,” Stiles says, still speaking softly, “thank you.” He looks up, and Derek looks that minimal amount down at him. “Thank you,” he tells Derek.

Derek nods, and his grip tightens.

Stiles tucks his face into the crook of neck and shoulder. The silence speaks volumes for them, and Stiles thinks it's kind of funny, a little ironic.

 

_Thank you for waiting. Thank you for being there. For being here. Thank you for doing this, for telling me, for stopping me._


End file.
